Cristina Azevedo Gomes

Adding Space and Senses to Mobile World Exploration

This chapter focuses on adding spatial and sensory information to mobile technologies to augment the affordability of mobile world exploration by primary school children. It starts by analyzing the significance of space and senses in childrens literacy and mobile learning applications. The opportunities and constraints associated with the use of mobile technologies for the exploration of senses and space within primary school learning activities are explored. The experience of the SchoolSenses@Internet project that designed a mobile application for creating georeferenced multisensory messages within a classroom collaborative environmental activity is described, highlighting the goals, development, and implementation processes. A study carried out over an academic year to investigate how children use GPS-equipped mobile phones to explore, create, and share multisensory geographic information is presented and analyzed to evaluate the use of mobile technology in environmental education and to assess learning achievements. The design and implementation process of the application is outlined, and the lessons learned are identified and summarized in the chapter.

ICT Projects and Planning: From Equipments to Activities

Our study is based on a comparative analysis of two institutional documents, produced in public primary and secondary Portuguese schools, meant to enhance the use of ICT resources: an application to the Iniciativa Escolas, Professores e Computadores Portateis (â??Schools, Teachers and Laptops Initiativeâ??), which aimed at equipping schools with ICT equipment, and the ICT Plan, a biannual plan of action for the integration of ICT in educational activities involving all the members of the educative community. The analysis focused on the typologies of activities planned for each school in both documents. As these documents were produced in consecutive school years, it was possible to recognize a continuity and evolution relationship towards the activation of ICT resources when conceiving, planning and developing learning activities.

CONTENT CONSUMPTION ON THE INTERNET AMONG HIGHER EDUCATION STUDENTS – PRELIMINARY RESULTS OF A PROJECT AT A HIGHER EDUCATION SCHOOL IN PORTUGAL

The global increasing importance of the Internet in the various segments of society is explicit, and its rapid control by younger users particularly seems irrefutable. But what do they consume? This paper presents the partial and preliminary results of the Project - The consumption and sharing contents of Internet by students of higher education: the case of the Polytechnic Institute of Viseu, Portugal, specifically related to the consumption practices of Internet content by students of the School of Education, one of the Polytechnic Institute of Viseu Schools. The principal objective of the Project is to understand the use that higher education students do of the contents available on the Internet. The methodological approach includes the application of an online questionnaire survey, with questions related to: i) the socio-demographic and institutional data of the participants; ii) access to and use of the Internet; iii) competences for its use; iv) consumption and sharing content; v) and attitudes and preferences regarding consumption and sharing. The sample includes 120 students, with participation of students attending the courses of Social Communication (N=79) and Multimedia and Plastics Arts (N=32). Most of the participants are female (N=88), attend the 1st year of the course (N=88) and the average age is 19.36 years (SD=2.56). Asked about how often they access the Internet, 95.8% of the students said they use it every day. Preliminary results from the quantitative analysis suggest that the most popular activities are: listen to music, see photos and read text posts on social networks daily. The analysis presented in this article refers only to data obtained between June and September 2017 and was performed using the SPSS - Statistical Package for Social Sciences.

Exploring the vineyard cycle: Mobile technology in non-formal environmental education settings

Mobile and ubiquitous technologies offer unique potentialities to develop environmental education activities. This paper presents the preliminary results of a project developed with children aged between 6 and 12, which explored the vine cycle over one year, visiting farms in the Dão vineyard area. Mobilizing a framework that integrates authentic and meaningful learning with situated cognition, it drew on a set of activities in which children were invited to take the roles of farmer, reporter and researcher. These activities were developed with the help of computers, electronic sensors, action cameras and audio recorders to explore the environment and farm activities.

Modeling and Simulation for Elementary Education

The Schoolsenses@Internet project explores the creation of georeferenced multisensory information in elementary schools collaborative contexts to promote educational success with a deeper learning at this educational level. Workshops with teachers and children in real contexts play an important role in the design and validation of project tools. This paper reports on the design process of one of these tools to support the use and the creation of georeferenced multisensory simulations and models in elementary education contexts.

A formação contínua de educadores e professores do 1º Ciclo em Tecnologias da Informação e Comunicação: Bases para um modelo conceptual de formação

A importância da formacao de professores em TIC e reconhecida como factor critico para a integracao das TIC no contexto educativo. Este artigo apresenta algumas linhas de reflexao sobre os desafios da formacao, fundamentando-se em modelos de referencia internacionais e na experiencia dos varios programas/medidas desenvolvidos em Portugal nas ultimas decadas, desde o Projecto Minerva ao ainda recente Plano Tecnologico da Educacao. As linhas de orientacao que aqui se apresentam, para o desenvolvimento de um modelo de formacao, convocam o quadro de referencia internacional e nacional discutido e defendem uma abordagem que enfatiza as teorias construtivistas de aprendizagem, a importância dos contextos significativos para os alunos e professores, as actividades colaborativas, a avaliacao formativa e qualitativa e a importância da investigacao.